Why pop stars are bringing their MacBooks on stage
Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Bieber, and Lorde are ditching the spectacle to get closer to us
Hello!
Hope we are all well 🫶
This week’s Open Tabs section is an essay on why stars are using laptops to create a sense of intimacy, inspired by recent performances from Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Bieber, and Lorde. I think there’s a lot we can learn about what matters in art, and how to keep seeking out the good bits of the internet!
Scroll for your weekly News, a Hot + Not from Miso Extra, and stuff to Add to Queue this weekend.
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Holly x
In her new music video for ‘drop dead’, Olivia Rodrigo slides down the hallways of the palace of Versailles, singing through wired headphones. The setting is explicitly grand – painted Baroque ceilings, gardens with geometric topiaries, sweeping marble staircases – but the video is intimate. We see Olivia sitting cross-legged on a bed, clicking on her computer, as she sings:
Oh, one night I was bored in bed
And stalked you on the internet
It’s feminine intuition
There is obviously a sharp juxtaposition at play here: having the means to hire out an entire palace but spending time in there plugged into your laptop. The wired headphones are no accident, either. Over the past couple of years, they have become the symbol of intentional, analogue listening, and a rejection of new technology.
If this was a 2010s music video, there would be dozens upon dozens of dancers (think ‘G.U.Y’ by Lady Gaga or ‘Firework’ by Katy Perry, which are also shot in palaces or castles), multiple outfit changes, even stunts.
Yet despite being in the upper echelon of pop stardom, with the budget for archival fashion and high-concept Petra Collins collaborations, Olivia is reaching for the mundane. The image of her sitting at her laptop is the ultimate symbol of intimacy and girlhood: it represents the quiet moments we have all spent in our bedrooms, using the internet for its best asset – the gateway through which we discover our taste and build our identity.
And crucially, she’s on a laptop, not her phone. While the phone is a tool for passive, infinite scrolling, the laptop is closer to active creativity. This is made literal in the second music video for ‘drop dead’, a DIY version filmed entirely via Photo Booth while on set.
Olivia is one of a few stars using their laptops to create a sense of intimacy with their big audiences. At Coachella last week, Justin Bieber delivered a stripped-back headline set. Dressed in baggy clothes within a cocoon-like set, he prioritised new music as a way to reset his boundaries and signal the artist he wants to become.
The highlight of the show saw Justin transform the stage into a digital living room. Sitting at his MacBook, he projected a raw feed of his YouTube history, shuffling through old songs, home videos, and memes. This wasn’t for everyone – many thought it was lazy, and even sexist, arguing that Sabrina Carpenter would not be able to get away with doing “so little”. I guess the question to ask here is whether you think the laptop is the window to the soul, or a slacking shortcut?
I found it to be extremely intimate. To watch a star on one of the biggest global stages effectively doing what we all do with our friends at home is not something we see often. Using YouTube for the old music may have been a clever workaround for his sold catalogue, but the outcome was a rare glimpse of a performer on his own terms, inviting us to meet him where he is now, rather than being stuck as a ghost of his teenage self.
By contrast, the Sabrina Carpenter show was technically exceptional, and the months of rehearsals and vast team input are felt in every frame. But even with a surprise Madonna cameo, reports suggested the crowd struggled to fully engage. Spectacle, then, has a ceiling: we are so overstimulated that “more” does not always equate to “better”. Sometimes it just adds to the noise.
If we want to feel more connected to art and to each other, we have to be okay with accepting “less” on the surface – not in artistic quality but in the shocks and the surprises. Sometimes the new thing will feel quieter and that’s okay.
Similarly, Lorde is another member of the laptop club. On her Ultrasound World Tour, for a moment she kneels on the floor, hunched over her laptop, tapping keys as she reimagines the song ‘Oceanic Feeling.’ The entire tour is stripped back, like watching a rehearsal – dancers are unchoreographed (or at least feel that way), she purposely shows the messy wires of her equipment, and wears plain t-shirts and boxer shorts. The MacBook moment is the pinnacle of this unfiltered era: watching Lorde simulate her at-home creative practice in real-time collapses the distance between the superstar on magazine covers and the Kiwi girl in her bedroom.
Why intimacy and why now? There are a few ways to look at it. Each of these stars has been in the public eye for a really long time: Olivia Rodrigo is only 23 but has been in the spotlight since 12, Justin Bieber was famously discovered on YouTube at 13, and Lorde signed to Universal Music Group at the same age. With each successful year of artistry, their audiences have increased, and so too has their level of production. Tours get bigger, album rollouts get longer, everything expands. There is a point when more is not always more, when the shininess of stardom eclipses the work itself.
There is also a specific kind of loneliness that comes with modern life. We are reached by notifications and see more Instagram handles than we do people IRL, but are rarely touched by art. It’s something we really have to seek out. Our phones are the site of this shallow connection, where algorithms feed us soulless campaigns and AI slop.
Many of us have accepted that we can’t really separate from the internet at this point, nor would we entirely want to. But there is a desire to carve out a healthier, and more fulfilling version of being online. Laptop time is different: being hunched over and tethered by a wire carries the nostalgia of our earlier, more intimate internet. Watching Lorde or Justin Bieber do the same thing on stage creates relatability, yes, as we see them discovering themselves in the same ways we used to. But even more than that, the quiet act offers a vote of confidence for stopping the performance and allowing yourself to be seen instead. When a stripped-back show makes you feel more than a 50-person dance troupe or novel outfit change, it proves that we already have everything we need to connect. We just need the signal to finally tune in.
Updates from the Capsule universe you may have missed this week:
Uniqlo’s next designer collab is Cecilie Bahnsen and you will be seeing it all summer
Are Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles engaged or is she just promoting Jessica McCormack jewellery?
Happy to learn that Suki Waterhouse drove upstate to work with Aaron Dessner on her new album
If you know that SZA cried her eyes out when Rihanna wanted to use her music for ‘Consideration’, then this interview response will land a little differently
P.S. Obviously Rihanna’s daughter is wearing a Dior couture diaper
Here’s Dakota Johnson looking gorgeous in a silk dress in Rome with Jessie Buckley, and then wearing a great red coat while out with Role Model
Sending an enormous YES to this Olivia Dean tour outfit
And to this from Amelia Dimoldenberg
And Zara Larsson is in her Emma from The Drama era
This week, Miso Extra popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅♀️ …
Miso is a singer, rapper, and producer based in London, known for her unique blend of hip-hop, hyperpop, and UK Garage. She signed with Transgressive Records and released her debut album, Earcandy, in May 2025. Her latest single ‘Right Here’ is about being present and enjoying life.
🔥🔥🔥Hot🔥🔥🔥
Being outdoors, gelato, drum machines, ceramics, Grey’s Anatomy, Planet of Lana, cold noodle salads, hand cream, cardamom, swimming, glasses of water that are half full
Hot Not… 🙅♀️🙅♀️🙅♀️
Being easily reachable, overpriced coffee, Lime bikes that have been left in a terrible state, people who don’t say please and thank you, glasses of water that are half empty
📺 Watching: Anne Hathaway on Popcast, this MUNA interview about what it takes to collaborate on creative work, and this excellent PinkPantheress x Derrick Gee interview, where she plays her favourite British music for him.
📖 Reading: Cosmopolitan’s new campaign on male fertility, and obviously this week’s viral article on The Cut, ‘Losing My Friend Over Wegovy’. They always outdo themselves.
🎧 Listening to: Three albums for spring: this from My New Band Believe, the extended version of Rosalía’s LUX (which she has elegantly called Completed Works), and the new Arlo Parks, which is great.
Also great product placement for Apple
What comes to mind for me is what MTV Unplugged aimed to do, or even NPR's tiny desk. Very stripped back. I saw Cleo Sol perform live last year, and while she's a very different artist, I thought it was so interesting that she had a barstool on stage with her cell phone, her Stanley Cup, and some sort of tea that she'd sip from in between songs. As an audience, we were of course, highly engaged with her performance, and singing and dancing along.